Turkish Steel Mill Rolls Outs Affordable Solutions to Improve Processes and Keep Production Flowing

iSDEMiR a full scale Iron and Steel plant specializing in pig iron, billets, slabs, wire rods, coil and hot rolling roll located in Turkey was facing a huge automation project with many control systems and processes needing to be streamlined. With so much disparate equipment scattered throughout the mill, there needed to be a way to manage and monitor all of the data. ASP Otomasyon, an established Turkish integrator, took on the task. With years of experience in industrial production, ASP Otomasyon, was able to approach the situation with unique and affordable solutions to improve processes and keep production flowing. Almost every control system had its own HMI and communicated with its own control system. The goal was not to lose any system function or redundancy structures and incorporate a single plant wide HMI Server. With so many different control systems and data structures, it was apparent OPC Servers were going to be needed to eliminate interoperability headaches. Using KEPServerEX OPC Server Technology, ASP Otomasyon was able to collect the necessary data from controls systems (PLC's and DCS) which are widely distributed throughout the plant. Prior to ASP Otomasyon, making a change in the control system could cause huge problems on the production line, whether it was holding up production or requiring a rework of an entire process. The beauty of Kepware's OPC functionality became apparent when the control systems were restarted and process engineers were able to make changes "on-the- fly". Another key product ASP Otomasyon incorporated into the project was Kepware's RedundancyMaster. RedundancyMaster was used to increases the reliability and availability of OPC data by allowing multiple OPC Server pairs to be configured into multiple redundant pairs. Each redundant pair seamlessly appears as a single OPC Server to the plant wide HMI server helping keep their processes going with minimal down time. The last piece of the integration involved a unique way of using Kepware's LinkMaster to add a layer of redundancy without having to purchase additional hardware and software. Typically LinkMaster is used to bridge data from one OPC server to another. In ASP Otomasyon's case, they used it to bridge two communication channels from one OPC Server communicating with two redundant PLCs, into a second OPC Server (Memory Driver), which acts as a data repository. Here is a breakdown of each function. PLC 1 Tags were created in OPC Server 1 (Channel 1) and mapped to Tag Group A in LinkMaster(as the first device) PLC 2 Tags were created in OPC Server 1 (Channel 2) and mapped to Tag Group B in LinkMaster(as the second device) Memory tags were created in Simulation OPC Server and mapped to Tag Group C in LinkMaster. LinkMaster wrote tags from Tag Group A to Tag Group C if the value was ok LinkMaster wrote tags from Tag Group B to Tag Group C if value quality was ok LinkMaster stopped the update if the value quality was not ok in any tag group. Tag Group C data was mapped to Simulator OPC Server and read from the top HMI Server This process was the final piece allowing for data collection of PLC's that did not have an HMI/SCADA connection to the plant wide HMI Server. Return to Kepware Solution Chronicles Page »»